And to Kate Winslet and my grandson, I leave a £50,000 beach hut, says Branson’s mother
AS a way to be remembered, it certainly takes some beating.
Sir Richard Branson’s mother has left her beach hut on one of Britain’s most beautiful stretches of coastline to her grandson, the husband of Kate Winslet.
Eve Branson, who died at 96 in January, has given the valuable shack to Edward Smith, 44, formerly known as Ned Rocknroll.
He and Miss Winslet lived in the same village as Eve – West Wittering in West Sussex, where experts estimate that beach huts are worth at least £50,000, although they rarely come up for sale.
Miss Winslet, 46, dated Smith after meeting him during a holiday on Sir Richard’s private island, Necker – when she saved Eve from a devastating fire. Some may see
Eve’s bequest to her grandson – who is Sir Richard’s nephew – at least partly as a gesture of her gratitude for his wife’s bravery. Miss Winslet and Smith married in 2012.
Probate records show that Eve, who died after battling Covid, left £87,000 in her will after much of her £3.7 million fortune was swallowed by debts and taxes.
An actress and Wren during the Second World War, she was also an air hostess, wrote several books and set up the Eve Branson Foundation
to provide skills training for young people in Morocco.
Her husband Ted, a former cavalryman, died in 2011. She asked that mourners wear ‘colourful clothing’ at her funeral and that a bench commemorating her life be placed by the sea in West Wittering.
She left a house in Morocco to her daughter Vanessa, 63, and her furniture and pictures to Sir Richard, 71. The remainder of her estate went to her 11 grandchildren.
Virgin founder Sir Richard has told how his ‘fearless’ mother helped to bankroll his early career with the £100 proceeds from selling a necklace in the late 1960s.
Her fearlessness was tested when fire broke out at her son’s Caribbean hideaway while she was staying there with Miss Winslet.
The Titanic star dived into full heroine mode when lightning struck Sir Richard’s home during a tropical storm in August 2011.
She carried Eve from the blazing building to safety. Likening the experience to being on a film set, she said: ‘I did think, “Someone is going to say cut in a minute – oh my God, no one is saying cut”.’
But she made light of her heroics, adding: ‘Genuinely, all it was was I helped her to get out faster.’